Oct 22, 2008

The first serious attempt from atheists to do advertising (the same way that religious groups do) launched yesterday in the UK. As far as I know this is the first time that atheists come together to express their own "believe" with advertising.

The original idea was to raise at least £ 11,000 to be able to run this ad in some of the London buses. Professor Richard Dawkins, bestselling author of The God Delusion, is officially supporting the Atheist Bus Campaign, and has generously agreed to match all donations up to a maximum of £5,500 to help the cmapaign hit the target soon. But today at 10:06 am the target was reached and at this point £ 73,000 has been raised through Just Giving. Of course I think this is a GREAT idea for several reasons. To start with, because "Religion is accustomed to getting a free ride - automatic tax breaks, unearned 'respect' and the right not to be 'offended', the right to brainwash children," as Professor Dawkins said.

But that is not all. With SO much advertising from different religions, it seems like God has been universally accepted as a truth, the only thing dividing people and getting them into wars is the name of that God and what his/her real policies are.

Atheists, non believers and agnostics do not have a voice just because we are not organized (as George Carlin brillantly put it, “Atheism is a non-prophet organisation”.) No prophet, no Pope, no "head", no dogma... no organization, no weight to counteract all the advertising out there for some God and his threats and promises.

Finally something is being done and I do have to applaud the effort. Sadly for now it done just in the UK, when it seems to me that if a country needs such advertsing and organization is the US, a country where according to a Gallup Poll findings a majority of the population (53%) say they would not vote for a presidential candidate who is an atheist.

While the goal was reached already, they are still receiving donations as more money means either a longer campaign or the usage of other media. If you want to donate of know more about the campaign, here is the link.

This is how the ads will look soon on the English buses:

If you are guessing why the word "probably" in the ad, there are very good reasons for that; and if you are curious on how all this started, it was with just a clever article in the Guardian.

Finally God will not be the only one "spreading his word" with ad agencies and outdoor campaigns!

PS: And if you want to see first hand how racist, intolerant and hateful God can be in the US, just watch this clip....

2 comments:

Aaron
said...

So pathetic. They're trying to make a statement that you could move on and not worry about religious guidelines while at the same time they clearly aren't 100% on their stance and hence CLEARLY aren't free of that worry themselves. If they were trying to make the point shouldn't they stand behind their "NO WORRY" stance and say "there IS NO god" rather than PROBABLY! ridiculous. And what a great sample of American Christians in your video. There are just as many educated and open-minded followers of Christ as there are closed-minded clones of their parents' warped belief systems. People like this who don't look at any policy stances and logical reasoning while voting are exactly why I can vote but don't.

Or perhaps its just as ignorant to claim that there is any kind of absolute as it is to claim a religious absolute.

We atheists are aware of that, and aren't big fans of being hypocrites (like it seems that the theists are) so we say probably, which is what we believe. I have no doubt in my heart that there IS NO GOD but philosophically wouldn't stand by that statement in a million years. No educated scientist would admit to an absolute... we just don't do it.